You can make your home more functional and aesthetically pleasing by installing decorative box shelves made of wood. Don’t worry because they are inexpensive and pretty simple to build. They are great additions to the living room and laundry area.
For this DIY project, you will need the following tools and materials:
• 3/8-inch brad point drill bit
• circular saw
• brad nail gun
• clamps
• drill bit set
• crosscut guide
• level
• drill or driver
• wood glue
• tape measure
• straightedge
• paint
• primer
• 120-grit sandpaper
• polyurethane and stain
• screw hole buttons
Instructions:
1. Choose your style.
Before you even start the project, you should decide on how you want your box shelves to look like. If you are building them for the Christmas season, you can paint them with Christmas colors and designs.
If you want them to last for a long time, you can customize them according to the theme of your home. For example, you can match their colors with the colors of your living room or laundry area. You can also make them practical if you want to place them in your garage.
2. Saw the wood.
Rip the 3/4-inch plywood sheets into 11 1/4-inch wide strips. Smooth out the edges. Then, you should use a crosscut guide to cut the box parts.
Stack 2 layers of plywood strips. See to it that they have identical width so that they can align perfectly. Otherwise, you will have a problem stacking them together.
Rip the 1/4-inch plywood sheet into 11 1/2-inch wide strips. Then, you should crosscut the back and side panels as well as the bottoms and tops. Use a guide and a circular saw to make these crosscuts.
3. Fasten box sides.
Use a carpenter’s square for the adjacent sides of the box. It would ensure that your corners have 90-degree angles. Place the square on wood blocks and then clamp it to the surface.
Apply some wood glue on the edges of the box parts and use brad bails to nail the corner together. Use three nails for each corner so that they hold together until the wood glue dries up.
4. Fasten the back.
Attach the rest of the corners. Keep them square by leaving your box in the carpenter’s square and then adding the back panel. Since these back panels are half an inch smaller than the total size of the box, they would leave a quarter inch gap on the edges. This would make them less conspicuous when the box is installed. Position your back panel accordingly and then nail and glue it.
5. Apply finish.
When the boxes are ready, you can apply some finish. Use a sandpaper to sand and smooth out rough spots. Make sure that you use a latex primer before applying paint.
You can use a foam roller to apply the paint and primer. Allow the primer to dry before painting the box. You can apply two coats of water-based polyurethane as well as stain.
6. Fasten the boxes together
When the finish has dried up, you may screw your boxes together. You may also simply hang them on your wall. To make your box stronger, you should keep its corner nails horizontal by hanging the boxes with their side pieces overlapping at the bottom and the top.
To connect these boxes, you should clamp them up and then drill a hole using the brad point drill bit. Next, you should use a standard bit to drill pilot holes inside the countersink holes. Drive the wood screw into this pilot hole to countersink the head. Apply some stain or paint on your screw hole button before plugging it.
7. Hang the boxes.
Finally, you can hang your box shelves. Drill two pilot holes and spray-paint the screw heads before driving them into the pilot hole studs. If you do not have a stud, you can use a self-drilling anchor.
Drill the pilot holes through your boxes into your wall and then remove them to drive the anchors. Fasten your box shelves onto your wall using your screws. Arrange them in any way you want.
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